RCS (Rich Communication Services) is an upgraded communications protocol for messaging that allows for enhanced features designed to provide a sleeker and more engaging experience while remaining within the native messaging app built into the customer’s smartphone.
It's the same channel, same inbox, but a totally immersive experience with a verified, branded sender ID that subscribers don’t have to save, rich visuals, and interactive replies.
Once your shop has gone through the application process and is provisioned as an RCS Agent, your campaign flows will have new RCS-enabled features. This guide introduces you to RCS campaign flows, highlights strategies for different campaign types and messaging, and helps you understand a campaign flow's overall and message-specific performance. We recommend looking through this guide to optimize RCS in Flow Builder for your brand.
Overview
RCS campaign flows equip you to offer a variety of experiences for your customers, whether it's a flash sale, promotion, or any other interactive campaign. Keep in mind that pairing campaign flows with strategic segmentation allows merchants to engage and send personalized messages to different pockets of the subscriber base and can result in higher click-through rates, conversions, and overall earnings.
RCS Message Basics
Merchants can create three types of RCS messages in Postscript.
- Text RCS - Text-only messages with suggested actions that appear as pill-shaped buttons beneath the text.
- RCS Cards - Multimedia messages that include an image, headline, text, card buttons (which are links or text response buttons embedded in the card beneath the text), and suggested actions that appear as pill-shaped buttons beneath the card.
- RCS Card Carousels - Multimedia messages that include up to ten RCS cards subscribers can swipe through.
RCS Message Elements
- Fallback messages - All Text RCS messages and RCS Cards have a Fallback version of the message in SMS or MMS form for devices that don't yet support RCS. The fallback content is automatically generated based on the RCS message contents. In the case of an RCS Card Carousel, only the first card in the carousel's fallback message is used.
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Card buttons - Up to four of these can be appended at the bottom of the RCS Card. Use card buttons to drive subscribers to take an external action (purchase, learn more, view a product, etc.). These are best for shoppable CTAs or directing traffic to a merchant's website.
- Available Actions
- Quick Reply is a pre-written response auto-sent back to the merchant (e.g., Show Me More, What is RCS?).
- Open Link is a direct link to a URL (e.g., PDP, collection, promo page). All URLs must begin with "https://".
- Available Actions
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Suggested actions - Up to 10 of these pill-shaped buttons can appear below the message/card. Use these to guide subscribers to reply or branch into a flow. They work best for educational flows, FAQs, or conversational flows.
- Available Actions:
- Quick Reply is a pre-written response auto-sent back to the merchant (e.g., Show Me More, What is RCS?).
- Open Link is a direct link to a URL, similar to buttons, but presented as part of the “conversation.ˮ All URLs must begin with "https://".
- Available Actions:
- Card Title - Presented in bold text on the card.
- Message body - Can include emojis, tags, and/or a "Reply STOP to unsubscribe" message.
RCS Campaign Flow Basics
In this section, we'll take a look at how to navigate Flow Builder's main page, dive into campaign properties, and explain how reconnecting splits works.
Understanding how to navigate the Campaign Flows main page is the first step to unlocking and harnessing the power of Flow Builder so your brand can optimize conversions, build an interactive SMS program, and create opportunities for hyper-segmentation.
- Select these three lines to unhide the Postscript navigation bar and navigate out of Flow Builder.
- Give your campaign flow a name that helps you identify it from all campaign drafts or sent campaigns, and add a description to your campaign flow. A description could be helpful to add notes about your campaign, and can be edited even if the campaign flow is in draft, activated, or completed status.
- Customize your flow by dragging and dropping Flow Actions into your campaign flow. Each action is broken down here.
- Preview your campaign properties. For more information on Campaign Properties, click the next tab in this module titled Campaign Properties to the right.
- Drag and Drop your Flow Actions (from step 3) to the Drag action here under the Campaign Properties tile.
- Save. Don't forget to save your flow when you are ready to schedule, launch, or need to continue editing at a later time.
- Schedule or Activate allows you to either activate your flow immediately or activate your flow at a scheduled date and time.
- This indicator shows the Status of your campaign. Statuses are Draft, Scheduled, Activated (meaning sending is in progress), and Completed.
- This tool allows you to zoom out, zoom in, or re-frame the entire flow (re-framing your flow is handy if you get lost in a void and aren't able to find your flow).
Let's take a look at campaign properties. You'll be given the chance to set these when you create a new campaign flow. For existing campaign flows, select the Campaign properties tile at the top of the flow builder.
- Send to subscribers in. The included customer segment tells Postscript which subscribers should receive the campaign. This allows brands to create targeted product and content campaigns and ensure they reach the right audience. Include (and exclude) multiple segments in a campaign flow, up to 10 total.
- Exclude subscribers in. This is an optional field and tells Postscript which subscribers should not receive the campaign. This allows merchants to create and send hyper-targeted campaigns. Exclude (and include) multiple segments in a campaign flow, up to 10 total.
- Safe Send. Checking the Exclude subscribers messaged within the past 16 hours turns on Safe Send. This optional feature, if enabled, prevents brands from sending a campaign to any subscriber in the selected segment who received another message from your shop in the last 16 hours (e.g., welcome series automation, abandoned cart automation, another campaign, etc.).
- Remove a subscriber if. This optional cancellation trigger tells Postscript when to remove a subscriber from a campaign flow.
Merchants can use Subscriber Event Splits to route subscribers down different paths based on their selected suggested reply. This ensures each subscriber gets a personalized follow-up experience.
- Add a Subscriber Event Split to the flow, setting the event to Subscriber Response.
- Map each suggested reply to a branch.
- Design branch-specific follow-ups
- Optionally, add subscriber tags based on which path the subscriber takes
Reconnecting splits allow you to send targeted messages or test out different strategies with splits reconvening at the end of the flow. All branches in Flow Builder will always reconvene at the endpoint in the flow. While splits will reconnect, you can still add actions (Delay, Send Message, A/B splits, Subscriber Event Splits, Trigger Splits within automation flows, etc.) to each split before the connecting endpoint.
Within nested branches, the parent split has reconnecting branches, then all child splits will also have reconnecting branches.
How Reconnecting Splits Work
Within automation flows, your splits reconnect at the end of the flow. Let's take a look at an example. In the flow below, the brand sends the initial message to the entire segment. Depending on subscriber replies (or lack thereof) to the initial message, they could be funneled down one of two branches - branch A or branch B.
Subscribers in this flow will be removed from the campaign once they create an order. In the first message, subscribers are asked if they want early access to an upcoming launch.
If a subscriber replies with Yes/Yeah/Yep/Etc., they are funneled into Branch A, which includes a confirmation message that they'll be notified before everyone else and a password to access the product page.
If they reply with anything other than Yes/Yeah/Yep/Etc. or do not reply at all, they are funneled down Branch B, which includes confirmation that they'll be notified when everyone else is.
Branch A notifies subscribers on March 1st that the new product is live on a password-protected webpage. A day later, on March 2nd, branch B notifies subscribers that the new product is live on their site.
At the end of this flow, the branches reconnect and send a final message to both parties, nudging them to purchase.
Flow Actions
Our toolkit of flow actions assists with perfecting the timing of your campaign send, allows you to experiment with various approaches through A/B splits, automates responses to subscribers based on their actions or inactions, and can tag subscribers based on their engagement with your brand for future hyper-segmentation. To add any of these actions, just drag them from the toolkit and drop them into your flow.
Postscript's RCS Message tool offers a variety of customization options to create on-brand campaign messages.
After dragging an RCS Message action to the flow, you can further customize the subscriber experience by selecting which type of RCS message to send on the left.
- Text RCS will send a simple text message along with actions to spur engagement.
- RCS Card will send a message that includes images, formatted text, and action buttons.
- RCS Card Carousel sends multiple RCS cards the subscriber can swipe through.
- Selecting this takes you to the RCS Content editor.
- All RCS messages include a fallback option for devices that only support SMS/MMS. This fallback message is generated automatically based on the RCS Content, but brands can further customize it by selecting the Fallback tab.
Text RCS
- Enter the text of the RCS Message.
- Add emojis to your message by clicking the smiley face icon.
- Add "Reply STOP to unsubscribe." by clicking the bell icon.
- Add tags to your messages, such as the first or last name of your subscriber, your shop name, or shop link.
- Add product or discount links to your message. Discount links are links embedded with a Shopify discount. Note: only Shopify coupons can be included in campaigns.
- Select a Template.
- Select + Add Action to add responses or links as buttons at the bottom of the RCS message.
- Select Update.
- After updating, the changes will display in the flow on the right.
RCS Card
- Add a JPEG, GIF, or PNG file under 100 MB.
- Enter a Title for the card.
- Enter the text of the RCS Message.
- Add emojis to your message by clicking the smiley face icon.
- Add "Reply STOP to unsubscribe." by clicking the bell icon.
- Add tags to your messages, such as the first or last name of your subscriber, your shop name, or shop link.
- Select + Add Card Button to add text responses or links as buttons at the bottom of the card itself.
- Select + Add Action to add suggested actions (links and text responses) as pill buttons at the bottom of the RCS message.
- Select the Add button to add the RCS card to the flow (or Update to save and refresh the preview on the right).
RCS Card Carousel
- Under Cards, create the three initial RCS cards for this carousel, using the RCS Card instructions.
- Optionally, add additional cards (up to 10) by selecting + Add Card.
- Insert the desired content (i.e. media, title, description and actions) into the card.
- Select Save to update and refresh the preview on the right.
With our Delay action, you can choose from three types of delays that will allow you to perfect the timing of each individual message within a flow to your subscribers (note: we do not recommend using a Delay action to kick off, or activate, your flow. Instead, please use the Schedule or Launch button in the upper-right corner of Flow Builder). Learn about each type below or, for a deep dive into message scheduling, check out this article.
- Delay your message For an amount of time. This option allows you to send your message after a specific interval of time (e.g. Delay sending this message until after a 5-minute delay or after a 5-week delay).
- Delay your message Until a specific date allows you to choose the exact date and time that you'd like to send each individual campaign message (e.g. Delay sending this message until December 20th, 2025, at 4:00 PM).
- Delay your message Until a certain time of the week allows you to choose a day of the week and a time of day that you'd like to send each of your flow messages (e.g. Delay sending these messages until Sundays at 2:00 PM).
- Save. Once you've added your message delays, don't forget to save!
- Duplicate your Delay action to make building out a flow of messages more efficient.
- Delete your Delay action by selecting this option or clicking Delete Step in the upper-right corner of the Delay editor.
Optimize your message conversions by finding the best combination of timing, images, message copy, and incentives for your brand all through A/B testing in Flow Builder!
- Auto Balance automatically sets your branches to an even distribution.
- Designate Branch A's distribution by adding the percentage of subscribers you'd like to have your Branch A experience (this includes messages, delays, etc.).
- Designate Branch B's distribution by adding the percentage of subscribers you'd like to have your Branch A experience (this includes messages, delays, etc.).
- Save. Once you've customized your A/B Split distributions, don't forget to save!
- Preview or add to your Branch A's experience by dragging and dropping flow actions to the Drag action here placeholder.
- Preview or add to your Branch B's experience by dragging and dropping flow actions to the Drag action here placeholder.
- Delete your A/B Split action by selecting this option or clicking Delete Step in the upper-right corner of the Split editor.
With Subscriber Event Splits, you can time and send automated messages to subscribers based on their actions or inactions. For example, you can send a promotional campaign and then split responses based on whether the subscriber purchased from your promotional campaign. Take a deep dive into this tool by checking out this article.
- Add an event to your flow. This indicates that you intend to branch subsequent messages based on this event. For example, create branches based on whether a subscriber creates an order after receiving the first message in your campaign flow.
- Add the Max Wait Time that you will allow for subscribers to complete the event. For example, wait 24 hours for subscribers to create an order after receiving the first message in your campaign flow.
- Create your branches and select specific properties of each branch. In the example above, we will branch the flow based on whether the subscriber creates an order using the Shopify discount code SHOPIFYDISCOUNT or not.
- Subscriber Event Splits will always include a none of the above or event never occurred branch to capture any events that do not match the specifications and subscribers who do not respond within the Max Wait Time.
- Add a new branch by selecting this option.
- Save. Once you've customized your Event Splits, don't forget to save!
- Preview your branches.
- Delete your Subscriber Event split action by selecting this option or clicking Delete Step in the upper-right corner of the Split editor.
With this tool, you can update subscriber profiles with tags based on their actions following a previously received campaign flow. This lets you craft more personalized and hyper-targeted campaign flows in the future. For a deep dive, take a look at this article.
- Add or remove a subscriber tag based on which path the subscriber takes. In the example above, subscribers will be tagged as conditioner or shampoo based on their response.
- Save. Once you've added your subscriber tag, don't forget to save!
- Preview the Update Subscriber action.
- After tagging a subscriber, you may consider sending them a follow-up message. In the example above, we send a shampoo recommendation to those who responded to our first campaign flow message with the word shampoo.
- Duplicate your Update Subscriber action to make building out a flow of messages more efficient.
- Delete your Update Subscriber action by selecting this option or clicking Delete Step in the upper-right corner of the editor.
The Add to Flow action in Flow Builder allows you to add subscribers to another automation flow that is triggered by an Added via Another Flow trigger event. You can move subscribers from a campaign flow or an automation flow into a new automation flow.
To use the Add to Flow action, you'll need to create a "child flow", or a flow that uses the Add via Another Flow trigger. Once you have a flow that uses the Add via Another Flow trigger, you can link a flow within a flow.
Check out this Guide to Add to Flow Action in Flow Builder for a deep dive into this action.
Link a Flow Within a Flow
- Select Messaging on the left-side navigation panel of your Postscript Dashboard.
- Select the Create Campaign button in the upper right, then choose Create Campaign Flow.
- Select Create a new campaign, then Create flow in the bottom right of the module.
- Set your campaign properties by selecting segments to include or exclude and, optionally, by setting a cancellation trigger.
- Under Flow Actions, select and drag Add to Flow into your flow. You can choose to have a subscriber continue down the parent flow by adding more actions (Delay, Send Message, Subscriber Event Split, etc.) after the Add to Flow action. Alternatively, you can end the parent flow with the Add to Flow action if you'd like the subscriber to subsequently receive the child flow only.
- You can select Save Changes if you'd like to continue editing your flow at a different time or select Schedule or Activate in the upper-right area of Flow Builder if you are ready to activate the flow immediately or schedule the flow to activate at a certain time.
Key Information
- Flows that use the Added via Another Flow trigger are not compatible with Postscript-generated Coupons. You can, however, use Shopify-generated coupons in these messages.
- If you attempt to deactivate a child flow linked in one or more flows, you'll receive an error message instructing you to reconfigure the parent flow without linking the child flow. This error message will also list all of the parent flows that the child flow is linked with.
Understanding Campaign Metrics
Metrics, or data, help you understand whether the messages you send are achieving the goals you've set. You can view the performance of your campaign flows on your Flows Dashboard page or on a specific campaign flow page. Simply select an activated flow to view overall performance metrics and metrics by a specific message.
- Revenue. The amount of sales dollars earned from orders created within your shop's designated attribution window following a campaign flow send. See your shop's attribution window here.
- Total orders. The number of orders attributed to this campaign flow. This card also contains your flow Conversion Rate (calculated by dividing the total amount of orders placed within your shop's designated attribution window by the total number of clicks * 100).
- Total clicks. The total number of times subscribers have clicked any link in this flow. Click-through-rate (CTR) is also populated on this card (calculated by taking total clicks on all links divided by the total number of messages sent.
- Sent Messages. View the total number of messages that were sent during your campaign.
- Total subscribers. The number of subscribers that received this flow. This card also populates the unsubscribe rate for this flow (calculated by dividing the total number of unsubscribes attributed to a flow message by the total number of messages sent in this campaign flow).
- Rev. (Revenue) is the amount of sales dollars earned from orders created within your shop's designated attribution window following a campaign message send. See your shop's attribution window here.
- EPM (Earnings per message) is calculated by the revenue attributed to this message divided by the number of messages sent.
- Orders is the number of orders attributed to this message within the flow.
- Conv. (Conversion Rate) is calculated by dividing the number of orders placed by the number of clicks on the links included in this message within your shop's designated attribution window * 100.
- Sent Messages indicates the number of this specific message that was sent to subscribers.
- Clicks is the total number of clicks on this particular message.
- CTR (Click-Through Rate) is calculated by taking the number of clicks on the links included in this message, divided by the number of times this specific message is sent.
- Sent (Sent Messages). The total number of this specific message that was sent to subscribers.
- Unsub.: (Unsubscribe Rate) is calculated by dividing the number of unsubscribes attributed to this message within the flow by the number of Sent Messages recorded for this specific message (e.g. 65,463). Note: Postscript attributes an unsubscribe to a flow if the flow message was the last message the subscriber received before unsubscribing.
Branch analytics will display on a Split Action card. These analytics are an aggregate view of all the individual messages and action metrics within a branch to provide you with a holistic view of the branch. Key metrics surfaced include:
- Total Attributed Revenue
- Aggregate EPM
- Total number of Orders
- Aggregate Conversion Rate
- Total number of clicks
- Aggregate Click-through rate
- Total number of sent messages
- Aggregate unsubscribe rate
These metrics are calculated based on the Send Message Actions contained within each branch. When a branch contains a nested split, then aggregated metrics reflect the performance of all send message actions from within the branch up to the point where the branches reconvene. This ensures that the analytics for "branch A" represent the combined results of messages within it - including the messages in the nested split. Additionally, if a branch contains nested splits, the metrics will roll up to the parent split to provide a complete picture of performance.
To hide branch analytics, simply click the Hide Action Stats button in the far right corner of the canvas.
Extra Resources
- Postscript's Video Learning Library. Level up your SMS skills with our quick walkthrough videos of Postscript features and tools.
- Fantastic Texts. Need some inspiration? Check out some real-life customers and how they interact with their subscribers using campaigns.
- Customize and Brand Your Messages. Learn how to further customize your messages by checking out this section in the Help Center!
Get Support
Have questions? Please feel free to reach out to our wonderful Support team at support@postscript.io or via live chat. You can also submit a support request here!
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